baggage from PHL to NHV

[wayman]

I'm taking 66, PHL-NHV, departing PHL just past midnight and arriving NHV at 4:20am Tuesday morning. (My car is in the New Haven garage. Let's just say I'll never drive to New Haven again and leave it at that, ok?)

Anyway, I've got a couple boxes of stuff I'd like to move up to Massachusetts. 66 has a baggage car, so I could check my stuff for free as a ticketed passenger and pick it up in NHV and drive it home with me. But the baggage hours at PHL and NHV are as follows:

PHL baggage closes at 10:30pm

NHV baggage re-opens at 4:00am

This suggests while NHV handles baggage on 66 (presumably offloading anything put on at WAS, and onloading anything going to BOS), PHL will not put baggage on 66. So what happens?

My best guess is that the baggage is sent PHL-NHV directly the next day on the NB Crescent or a Silver. So my hope is that if I'm holding tickets for the 66 that arrives in NHV on Tuesday, I can drop off my baggage on Sunday in PHL and they will send it north on Monday (or even Sunday depending on when I drop it off), so it will be waiting for me in NHV when I arrive. Not a bad situation for me.

Can anyone confirm this?

In any event -- whatever route it actually takes -- I assume dropping it off in PHL on Sunday will be early enough... and that's possible for me, so I'll probably just do it. But I'm curious about the details anyway, because occasionally I've had baggage agents balk when putting the bags on the train I'm taking doesn't work out, and I've had to heavily encourage them to put my bags on an alternate routing even when they should jolly well know how to do that themselves.... <_<

So there's also a bizarre worst-case scenario I can envision, in case the agent I get somehow insists that baggage must travel on my train, which is that they'd send it to WAS a day in advance, and then send it on the 66 I'll be on, such that it will get offloaded in NHV same time as I detrain. I can't imagine they'd actually do this, but given the baggage agent I encountered in LAX in December ... anything is possible. hboy:

Still, dropping off the baggage in PHL today would make this possible and not actually inconvenience me.

 

[Guest]

The Crescent and Silver Star/Meteor only operate to New York City; then how would the baggage get to New Haven?

 

[the_traveler]

The good news is that you could check your bags in PHL - if you get there before the baggage room closes. The bad news is that they can not be carried in #66 to NHV!

(NHV DOES NOT offer baggage service - per the TT - for #66. It does for #67 ONLY!)

It doesn't make sense to me either! Especially that there is only 4 hours between #67 and #66 - and these are the only 2 trains that serve NHV with baggage cars!

 

[wayman]

Ok, stupidity on my part for thinking 20/92/98 worked

But... wait, Dave, does that mean Amtrak will refuse to check PHL-NHV? Or that they'd do it by an even more convoluted route, like 66 PHL-BOS, 67 BOS-NHV? (At which point I'd be happier for them to just do 66 PHL-BOS, 449 BOS-SPG... though at this point it doesn't look like I'm able to access the stuff to ship on this Philadelphia visit, so the whole New Haven issue is no longer a problem to solve.)

 

[the_traveler]

But... wait, Dave, does that mean Amtrak will refuse to check PHL-NHV? Or that they'd do it by an even more convoluted route, like 66 PHL-BOS, 67 BOS-NHV? (At which point I'd be happier for them to just do 66 PHL-BOS, 449 BOS-SPG... though at this point it doesn't look like I'm able to access the stuff to ship on this Philadelphia visit, so the whole New Haven issue is no longer a problem to solve.)

I'm not sure, but the only 3 stations north of NYP with checked baggage service are NHV, PVD and BOS. BOS also has the LSL, so that makes sense. PVD has service on both #67 and #66, but NHV only offers it on #67!